got used to it, but at first the effect was very jumpy.  From first to last during this journey we had plenty of variety and none of that monotony which is inevitable in sledging over long distances of Barrier in summer.  Only the long shivering fits following close one after the other all the time we lay in our dreadful sleeping-bags, hour after hour and night after night in those temperatures—­they were as monotonous as could be.  Later we got frost-bitten even as we lay in our sleeping-bags.  Things are getting pretty bad when you get frost-bitten in your bag.

There was only a glow where the moon was; we stood in a moonlit fog, and this was sufficient to show the edge of another ridge ahead, and yet another on our left.  We were utterly bewildered.  The deep booming of the ice continued, and it may be that the tide has something to do with this, though we were many miles from the ordinary coastal ice.  We went back, toggled up to our sledges again and pulled in what we thought was the right direction, always with that feeling that the earth may open underneath your feet which you have in crevassed areas.  But all we found were more mounds and banks of snow and ice, into which we almost ran before we saw them.  We were clearly lost.  It was near midnight, and I wrote, “it may be the pressure ridges or it may be Terror, it is impossible to say,—­and I should think it is impossible to move till it clears.  We were steering N.E. when we got here and returned S.W. till we seemed to be in a hollow and camped.”

The temperature had been rising from -36 deg. at 11 A.M. and it was now -27 deg.; snow was falling and nothing whatever could be seen.  From under the tent came noises as though some giant was banging a big empty tank.  All the signs were for a blizzard, and indeed we had not long finished our supper and were thawing our way little by little into our bags when the wind came away from the south.  Before it started we got a glimpse of black rock and knew we must be in the pressure ridges where they nearly join Mount Terror.

It is with great surprise that in looking up the records I find that blizzard lasted three days, the temperature and wind both rising till it was +9 deg. and blowing force 9 on the morning of the second day (July 11).  On the morning of the third day (July 12) it was blowing storm force (10).  The temperature had thus risen over eighty degrees.

It was not an uncomfortable time.  Wet and warm, the risen temperature allowed all our ice to turn to water, and we lay steaming and beautifully liquid, and wondered sometimes what we should be like when our gear froze up once more.  But we did not do much wondering, I suspect:  we slept.  From that point of view these blizzards were a perfect Godsend.